A 6-year-old Texas boy who was attacked by an adult neighbor in September died on Tuesday after fighting to stay alive for weeks, his father said.
In a grim update on GoFundMe, Arturo Diaz, the father of Jeremy Diaz, said he was unable to resuscitate his son after he found him pale, with no heartbeat and no motion in his eyes.
“He fought for over 60 days and was improving, but at the end, the odds seemed against him and he gave up the ghost,” the father said.
According to a statement by the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office in Texas, Jeremy was allegedly attacked by his neighbor, Daniel Logan, 39, on Sept. 11 after Logan broke into the home armed with a baseball bat.
Logan’s mother followed her son into Jeremy’s home to beg him to stop, but he struck her instead, the Austin American-Statesman reported, citing an arrest affidavit.
Logan’s wife told police she called 911 when she saw her mother-in-law come back home covered in blood and “frantically screamed that Daniel was killing everyone inside.”
Logan was arrested soon after on charges of injury to a child and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon against a family member, police said.
Jeremy was taken to the hospital in critical condition following the attack and remained there ever since.
A community member initially launched the GoFundMe in the wake of the attack to help Jeremy’s parents cover medical bills and organize resources to assist the family.
On the GoFundMe, Jeremy’s parents made frequent updates about his condition and shared thoughtful words about their son as he fought to stay alive.
According to court records reviewed by HuffPost, Logan was found incompetent to stand trial in October and is set to return to court for a mental health evaluation on Nov. 28.
Marc Chavez, Logan’s attorney, told USA Today in October that his client’s case involved mental illness.
“While the allegations sound troubling, we ask everyone to reserve judgment until all the facts come to light especially while we investigate issues related to serious mental illness,” Chavez said.
On Saturday, Jeremy’s father said his son’s vital signs had improved. The hospital staff planned to take him off the ventilator on Wednesday, but Jeremy suffered a “neural storm” Monday night.
According to FlintRehab, a provider of restorative neurorehabilitation technologies, neurostorming is likely to occur after a traumatic brain injury that can result in an increased heart rate, blood pressure, or body temperature regulation.
“It was the worst storm we had seen and it came out of no where. It was almost 6 hours of hell on earth ― I can only imagine the torture he went through,” Diaz wrote on the GoFundMe page.
Diaz shared his last sweet moment with Jeremy before the attack, saying he was reading to him before bed.
“When we were done reading, the last thing he said was, ‘papa, watch me cover myself,’” Jeremy’s father wrote. “Today I covered his face for the last time. I was there when he took his first [breath] and saw him take his last ― no parent should see their children buried before them.”